It was made entirely of wood and so could be used for no more than 20 seconds before bursting into flame

When Alexander the Great (right) marched his army close to the ­Caspian Sea en route to ­invading Persia, he was harried by fighters from the region now occupied by the post-Soviet republic of Azerbaijan hurling pots of what?

Burning oil

Caustic acid

Putrefying fish heads

During the last-ditch defence of Baghdad at the start of the Iraq war in 2003, Saddam Hussein’s loyalist Fedayeen soldiers appeared equipped with which other-worldly item of kit?

Darth Vader helmets

Klingon facemasks

Poisoned orc daggers from Lord of the Rings

When the Aztecs first fought the Spanish conquistadores in 1520 they were ­initially baffled by which novel Spanish tactic?

Protecting themselves with metal armour

Trying to kill their opponents

Obeying the orders of officers (instead of each man fighting for himself)

The real-life Dracula, Romanian Prince Vlad III, spent most of his life resisting the expansion of the Ottoman Turks into the Balkans. He tortured tens of thousands of his enemies to death by impaling them. However he devised other, less famous ­tortures, including which of the following?

Force-feeding captives dried grain followed by water until their stomachs burst open

Skinning the soles of their feet, adding salt and bringing in goats to lick it off

Inserting their heads into a cage of bats until driven insane from the ultrasonic squeaking

The elephant was the main battle tank of the classical world. What animal weapon did the Romans come up with to counter the threat?

Lion

Mouse

Pig

In 1961, the Soviet Union tested the Tsar Bomba, producing the biggest nuclear explosion of all time (more than 3,000 times more powerful than the blast that destroyed Hiroshima). They originally planned a bomb far larger still, but downscaled the design because:

They wanted to keep it secret from US spy planes

It would have used up the country’s entire nuclear stockpile

They realised that a large part of Russia would become a nuclear wasteland

Despite being theoretically ­neutral throughout the Vietnam war, Laos has earned the dubious distinction of being the most intensively bombed country on earth. Per capita, how much ordnance was dropped?

One kilogram

One hundred kilograms

One tonne (1,000 kilograms)

You got…

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